


Tell Me You Love Me (The Orbital Capture Mix)

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drunkenness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-23
Updated: 2010-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-06 14:49:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius and Remus are locked in orbit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me You Love Me (The Orbital Capture Mix)

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This fic was written for [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/remix_redux/profile)[**remix_redux**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/remix_redux/) 2007\. It was remixed from [You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk](http://community.livejournal.com/katfix/21716.html) by [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/kyasuriin/profile)[**kyasuriin**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/kyasuriin/).

Walpurga Black screamed early and often and her breath always smelled like her wine; Sirius hates the smell, couldn't stomach it even at James' wedding, had toasted with wizarding absinthe instead. Regulus could smell the wine too, and because of the wine he forgives her. Sirius understands about the wine and he can't forgive her. He can't forgive himself, either.

"You only tell me you love me when you're drunk," Remus says in the parlor.

At the kitchen table, Sirius raises his head from his arm and says, "Tha's not true, Moony," but his hand is clutching closer the bottle of absinthe he's been nursing all evening. He's been in the kitchen since he got back to the flat and this is the first thing Remus has said to him. Sirius does not want to admit that the silence was a relief.

The newspaper rustles; the voice comes from behind it. "It is."

(Sirius knows this in an abstract way, the same way that he knows his own name, that one and one are three for sufficiently odd values of one, that the next full moon is a week from Thursday but he will not be there for Remus, again. He shakes his head against it anyway. It is false for sufficiently warped values of falsehood, for the way things look through the bottom of a bottle, all wavy and soft and a brilliant green—)

Remus continues calmly, all wrapped in the paper, "You only tell me you love me when you've had entirely too much to drink."

"But I do love you!" Spinning, spinning, spinning, like the moon in its orbital roll, but Sirius gets himself upright and even manages to achieve indignation. Through the kitchen door, he can see Remus sitting near the fire, not even looking up. Remus hasn't looked up in a while, actually; Sirius thinks it may have been months. The last time they sat in the same room all evening they argued about money, about Remus' inability to get a job—how no, he couldn't work for Muggles because the Ministry would lock him up for it—safer to stay in the flat, of course he could still help the Order here. Sirius walked out of that one and his memory jumps, like someone's torn out the pages that explain how he ended up on the hearthrug of James' house, hungover, at noon—

"I love you too," Remus says, and after a moment he folds up the paper.

Sirius takes another pull of absinthe as Remus comes to him, and wants to ask, where do you go during the days, while I'm at work? He wants to ask, where did you get the money for that paper, for my birthday present, for that new set of robes? He wants to ask, do you know about the spy in the Order? He wants to ask, can I trust you?

The drinks drown the questions and Remus keeps coming towards him, drawing in like tides, like he doesn't want to be here but can't help it, any more than Sirius can help soothing his nerves with expensive alcohol—it's that or fall, stop fighting, stop moving, and none of them can afford the rest. Sirius smiles as Remus embraces him from behind, and he bends back in an arch to kiss his chin upside-down, but it's nothing they haven't done a thousand times before, and when their lips fall together it's like it's just inertia.

Remus puts the bottle away, as if he thinks Sirius won't be into it tomorrow night, or tomorrow morning, or that it's got a cousin in his office that Prongs doesn't see. Sirius lets him put the bottle away because even if he pays the rent the flat really belongs to Remus; Remus, after all, has nowhere else to be or go. At least Sirius doesn't think he has. Hopes.

He kisses Remus again and paws a bit and Remus actually smiles a little. "Should we get you to bed?"

Sirius nods, heavy and blurred with drink, and he pushes himself up with his legs. Up and up, and then down, or over, all motion is relative anyway—he lists and falls into Remus' embrace, is settled and is righted. Sirius leans against Remus' shoulder and breaths in the wooly, inky scent of him, and thinks of all the other things that alcohol can say for him. I love you and I want to trust you and I don't know how to fix this and, maybe, maybe, just stay like for a little while, let's just stay_._

Remus props him up and pushes him forward, and Sirius smirks at him to swallow down the words. There is not enough absinthe in the world for all the things he wants to say, and he doesn't know if Remus wants to hear them anymore.

Instead they get into the bedroom, a dark room with a mean little window facing a blank brick alley, and Sirius leans into Remus's hands moving nimbly over his buttons and zippers and clasps. He stretches as the cold air hits his skin. "I wanna fuck you," he said, face turned to the ceiling, feeling suddenly wanton and magnanimous.

"I hardly think you're in any shape to do that," Remus says dryly, and tugs down Sirius' trousers.

"But I want to…" Touch you, hold you, fall into you and be one flesh, because it means we'll be together, together and both actually present. "We never fuck anymore, Moony. Why don't we fuck any more?"

Remus doesn't make eye contact, doesn't look at anything but the buckles of Sirius' boots. "Well, Sirius, we never fuck any more because when I come home, you're always bloody sloshed out of your mind."

"Well tha's not fair."

"You don't have to tell me."

Sirius reaches out for Remus' back, his shoulder, and it's partly because he's drunk and dizzy and partly because he wants to be sure he remembers how it feels in his hands. Remus is built broadly but never quite fills out, and his shoulder-blades poke out a little. His skin has been broken and re-knit many times, too many times, and the scars will never, ever heal. Sirius suddenly wants to feel that, know that, touch and taste and remember and say, I understand, that's me, I'm broken too. He fans his fingers and feels the worn-out softness of a shirt, and under it living muscle and warm flesh, and this used to be easier. This used to be the easiest thing in the world.

Remus stands and breaks the moment, eyes down, undressing himself. Sirius wants to reach out to help but he doesn't see where to get a hand in.

"Okay," he blurts, and it makes Remus look up at him, like they're both really here and now. "Tomorrow. I'll make it up to you."

Remus's mouth quirks. "You always say that."

"No, no, this time I mean it!"

"Again, you always say that."

Sirius pushes Remus's hands out of the way roughly and goes for the belt buckle, fumbling and tugging because he will do this. He wants to do this. He remembers how it used to be with them, how good they were together, and he fucking wants that again. They were good in school, weren't they, when Remus was happy, and Sirius didn't have to drink as much, and he thinks they were in love. They must've been. They had fallen together like it was meant to be, collision course, something that just hadn't been with James, something Peter and Lily had never approached. Sirius thinks that they must've been passionate because otherwise they wouldn't have got here.

Remus says, "Let me," and bats Sirius away, opening the buckle and stepping out of his trousers and pants.

Sirius sits on the bed, aims that way anyway, but his momentum keeps him going and gravity takes him horizontal. He rolls up, levers himself up on his elbows to watch Remus finish undressing and pad about the dim room, putting their clothes in one hamper. Sirius idly envies his shirt and pants and trousers, knowing they will be mixed together with Remus's, knowing they will smell like the same cheap laundry soap and get jumbled together during folding. Sirius wishes he were his clothes, that he and Remus fit together that way again, instead of their current loose orbits, circling one another but unable to meet.

He snags Remus' wrist while he is climbing under the covers, pressing a wet kiss against his vein. "Tomorrow," he says, really feeling this promise, really forgetting all the reasons that he will break it. "Tomorrow is fuck day."

Remus gives him an inscrutable look, and Sirius doesn't know if he is hoping for anger or absolution. What he gets is a kiss, not on the mouth, on the forehead—dry and neat and brief as a whisper. "Good night, love," Remus says.

"G'night," Sirius says, and reaches blindly for Remus, skates his fingers too briefly over familiar skin and hair. "I love you, Moony," he says into the encroaching dark, but he doesn't hear Remus' answer, if there is one. Instead he dreams of love, and absinthe, and orbits; Lily explained once that the moon stays in orbit because it's always falling; falling too slowly to hit the ground, falling too fast to break away from the earth's deep embrace. James had asked, during the same conversation, why Sirius so favored absinthe. Sirius couldn't really explain about the wine without explaining about his own frailty; instead he just smiled, and said that he was always drawn to bitter things.

He and Remus are falling now. He wonders if they'll crash, or just escape.


End file.
